Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Polish authorities have seized $370 million from two shell companies with alleged links to South American drug cartels and possible connections with crypto-exchange Bitfinex

The Bitfinex story just got even stranger. Rumors have been bouncing around for months about the Bitfinex exchange and the Tether coin that it is linked with.

Tether sells itself as a so-called “stablecoin” that is pegged to the US dollar. But critics say Tether has been issuing more tokens than it has dollars, its trading volume regularly exceeds its market cap and it has never been able to prove conclusively how big its dollar reserve actually is. In December, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission reportedly sent subpoenas to both Bitfinex and Tether, although neither party would confirm or deny any details related to this.

Now media in Poland are reporting that the seizure, by Polish authorities, of US$370 million from two companies last week on suspicion of money laundering for Colombian drug cartels has links to, yes indeed, Bitfinex.

The reports say this chapter of the story starts with a scam involving the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs building a new embassy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When some of the construction funds were “diverted”, an Interpol investigation followed the money to two companies with links to South America but company registrations in Poland....MORE